TEMPE - Omarion Miller has spent much of his first season at Arizona State doing a little bit of everything, but not nearly as much of what made him such a dangerous big-play receiver at Colorado.
That showed up in the numbers right away. Miller led the Big 12 in yards per reception last season as a wideout for Colorado, but through three games at ASU his average had dropped from 17.9 yards to 7.5. The gap, Miller said, has had more to do with how opponents have defended the Sun Devils than with anything missing from his game.
“I have not been going deep much because of the defenses we’ve faced,” Miller said. “Early on, I’ve been the gadget guy a little bit.”
Now the senior is set for a bigger stage Saturday, when ASU (3-2 overall, 1-1 Big 12) visits undefeated No. 10 Texas Tech (5-0, 2-0) at Galaxy Stadium in Lubbock, Texas.
Miller arrived in Tempe after three seasons under Deion Sanders at Colorado, and he has been working with receivers coach Hines Ward, whose own playing résumé includes 14 seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers, two Super Bowl titles and a Super Bowl MVP award. Ward has seen enough of Miller on Colorado film to know the Sun Devils are dealing with a complete player.
“Super athletic, superb ball skills,” Ward said of Miller’s Colorado film. “Really the total package. He could pretty much run the whole route tree, do a lot of different things.”
What ASU has asked of Miller has shifted from game to game. In the opener, a 70-7 win over Morgan State, he caught eight passes for 102 yards, and coach Kenny Dillingham praised the receivers’ work away from the ball. Dillingham said Morgan State’s defense kept perimeter screens available, and ASU kept taking them.
That pattern continued through the first three games. Miller had 20 catches in that span, but a lot of the production came on screens and underneath throws, with yardage piled up after the catch rather than through steady downfield separation.
The next two games were a tougher test. Texas A&M and Kansas held Miller to 12 catches for 47 yards on 23 targets combined, and his longest grab in those games went for 11 yards.
Still, Dillingham said the lack of explosive numbers wasn’t because ASU wasn’t trying to attack vertically. Over those two games, he said, Miller ran eight different downfield routes.
“Is that too many? Some teams only put people on four routes,” Dillingham said.
For Dillingham, the issue comes back to coaching and connection, not blame.
“If it’s not working, or for some reason the connection isn’t there, that’s not a player problem,” Dillingham said. “That’s a coaching problem. That’s a ‘me’ problem that I have to figure out how to make it work better.”
Ward’s emphasis with Miller has included plenty more than route work. He has focused on blocking, and he’s boiled that message down to four words: “No block, no rock.”
ASU plans to lean on that approach against Texas Tech.
Miller has moved around the offense as he learns the system, and Ward said his impact has gone beyond catches and yardage.
“He’s been phenomenal to work with. He’s been a joy to our receivers’ room,” Ward said.
“I know he’s one of our locker room’s favorites. Everybody gravitates around him.”
Miller’s recent games have hinted at the downfield version of himself ASU wants to unlock. Against Baylor on Oct. 3, he caught five passes for 85 yards and a touchdown from 30 yards out. A week later against Hawaii, he totaled six catches for 78 yards.
His longest reception against Hawaii turned into the kind of play the Sun Devils want more often: Cutter Boley’s pass reached Miller 16 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, and Miller turned it into a 49-yard gain, accounting for 49 of his 78 receiving yards that day.
Through five games, Miller has 31 catches for 312 yards and two touchdowns. He averaged 14.8 yards per catch against Baylor and Hawaii, a sharp jump from his first three games, though still short of the 17.9-yard average he posted at Colorado.
That remains the goal.
“I need to be that guy going down the field,” he said.
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